Srinagar hosts its first Irani Cup as Jammu & Kashmir prepare to face the Rest of India

Srinagar's Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium stages the Irani Cup for the first time this week, four decades after the ground last held a match of national standing

The 63rd Irani Cup begins on Thursday and runs to 5 October, with Ranji Trophy champions Jammu & Kashmir hosting the Rest of India over five days of first-class cricket in the Kashmir valley.

Rishabh Pant captains the Rest of India and keeps wicket, with Sarfaraz Khan named his deputy in the squad the BCCI announced on 16 September.

For the venue the fixture is a restoration as much as a reward. Sher-i-Kashmir Stadium has hosted two one-day internationals in its history, the second and last of them in September 1986.

A title that came with hosting rights

Jammu & Kashmir won the Ranji Trophy last season for the first time in their history, and the Irani Cup follows the domestic champions home.

The match is the first Irani Cup played in Jammu & Kashmir, and the first time the competition has come to the valley.

It gives a side that spent decades on the margins of the Indian domestic game a five-day examination against a Rest of India team assembled from the national fringe.

A ground that lost two decades

The stadium opened in 1983 and held an ODI between India and West Indies that October, then a second against Australia in September 1986. No international has been played there since.

The Central Reserve Police Force occupied the ground for 18 years through the period of militant violence in Kashmir, vacating it in November 2007.

First-class cricket returned in 2009 after the Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association renovated the outfield and facilities. The listed capacity remains about 5,000.

Pant leads a squad drawn from the Test fringe

The Rest of India party carries several players with India experience, among them Sarfaraz Khan, Mukesh Kumar, Manav Suthar and Saransh Jain. Akash Deep was named subject to fitness clearance.

Pant's selection is the headline. He was left out of India's ODI and T20I squads for the current West Indies white-ball series, and the Irani Cup gives him a red-ball assignment instead.

The rest of the squad is Sanat Sangwan, Shikhar Mohan, Sudip Gharami, R Smaran, Mukesh Choudhary, Aryan Juyal, Aryan Pandey, Anukul Roy and Ayush Doseja.

J&K in camp since 24 September

The JKCA named an 18-man squad for a preparatory camp that began at the stadium on 24 September, built around Paras Dogra, Shubham Khajuria, Abdul Samad and the fast bowler Umran Malik.

"The preparatory camp at SK Stadium will provide the selected players an opportunity to train together, assess their combinations and fine-tune their preparations before taking on the Rest of India," a JKCA official said.

Also in the camp are Yawer Hassan, Qamran Iqbal, Kawalpreet Singh, Shubham Pundir, Kanhaiya Wadhawan, Abid Mushtaq, Rydham Sharma, Vanshaj Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Sunil Kumar, Umar Nazir, Lone Nasir Muzaffar, Sahil Lotra and Waseem Bashir.

Cameras, DRS and a first AGM in a decade

The match will be televised, and the BCCI is installing a broadcast set-up of roughly 20 cameras at a ground that has never carried one on this scale.

That includes stump microphones, gantry cameras on both sides of the ground, slip and spin-vision cameras, and six Hawkeye cameras dedicated to the Decision Review System. Coverage is on Star Sports, with streaming on JioHotstar.

The JKCA reviewed the arrangements at its annual general meeting on Sunday, the association's first in nearly a decade, alongside the Ranji title and the growing number of J&K players in the IPL.

Jammu & Kashmir have never played an Irani Cup match before Thursday, and they will play this one at home.

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